War behind masks
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: War. It comes and goes, carving the face of history. It carves the souls of men as well. Tonight, six men remember, and wonder, and grieve.


Last night, I went to see the Drama class's spring production, WAR. When I came home, I was unable to sleep because I had so much on my mind. At 9:57pm, I sat down at my desk and uncapped a pen. At 10:56pm, I recapped it and went to bed. This morning, this was what I had. I home you like it. If any of the THS DramaFreaks are reading, this, then you know that I was truly moved. Great show guys!

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They are men who have seen war. Felt it. Smelled the blood and fear and metal and pain. Afterwards, they hung up their weapons, bathed, lay down, and returned to the battlefield. Whether they fought one man or one people, a country or a company, campaign or mistake, they know they carry it with them.

Tseng lies in bed, the windows thrown open to catch any hint of a breeze in this close, stifling city. He longs for the fresh air and spaces of Wutai, as he does every night. Tonight, he writhes in the grip of a nightmare that is only part fantasy, a twisted parody of the Wutai War, the war that tore one nation into scattered, bloody shreds, with neither pride nor hope left. The war in which he fought against his own country, his own people, his own history. The war tat he still questions every day. What if he had turned traitor and spied for Wutai from the heart of ShinRa? What if he had run from ShinRa, run back o fight alongside men he'd grown up with? What if he'd pulled the trigger of the gun he'd held under his chin the day they declared war? What if?

Reno is sprawled on his couch, having drunk himself into a stupor. In the morning, he'll have a nasty hangover. He'll get up, moan and curse, shower, eat, and go to work, doing his best to ignore the pounding headache and homeless children he passes. If he stops- and he wants to but never does- he won't be able to get away again. He'll succumb to the memories of being eleven and on the street, not yet stealing but being slowly poisoned by his very surroundings. He'll remember the drugs, and his veins will burn with the ghost of his addictions. He will stay in the car, keep driving, focus on the headache. He'll go to work like a good boy, come and go and fetch like the trained dog he is, and, at the end of the day, he'll go home to drink, and maybe cry, wondering how he went from drugged, addicted child to drugged, addicted child in a killer's body. He won't remember. The bottle will empty, and so will his mind, until he passes out on the couch again.

Cloud dozes on the bathroom floor, too sick to move back to his bed. Stress and long hours do that; they build and build until they finally release and he spends hours puking while Tifa fusses outside the locked door. What happened? One day, he was a starry-eyed boy with an almost-girlfriend and a loving mother. The next, he was a soldier, secretly friends with the second most powerful man in the army. The following day, he was a lab rat, poked and prodded and examined countless times in a mad search for perfection. Then he was a burden and a death sentence. The day after that, he fought the perfection he'd fought before, the perfection Hojo had tried to turn him into. Today, he was a delivery boy, working hard to help support two kids that aren't his and a woman he isn't sure how he feels about. Tomorrow, he will still be a delivery boy, tired and sick but back to work, trying to outrun his past by gunning the motor and taking curves as sharp as he dares.

Vincent shivers in his bed, remembering the harsh, rude cold of the lab tables and the precise, biting cold of the Mako tanks. The heavy suffocating cold of three decades in a coffin hidden in the basement of a mountain mansion. The blankets Tifa has brought him, thinking his shivering comes from illness, bear down on the dark hole in his chest like lead weights. She cares. The children care. But Lucrecia didn't. She cared only for her baby and her research. The life and sanity and love of a young Turk meant nothing. She could help pour the souls of four monsters into him, using his own soul as a crucible, and cause him unimaginable torture without batting an eye. And yet, he cannot find it in the depths of his broken heart, where even the demons do not go, to hate her. He cannot blame her for the pain of then and now, of the anguish, the doubt, the sleepless nights spent wondering, should the task fall to him, he could kill the only child of the woman he loved. The twisted, poisoned, evil child she bore and died bearing. The cruel, merciless man who wished to murder the entire Planet. In the darkness, Vincent shivers, wondering if he could hold the cold metal of his guns in his hand and kill Sephiroth.

Cid sleeps on the roof of the hangar, exposed to the weather and the open sky, in the place he feels safest. He hates to admit it, but he's afraid of closed spaces. Even his quarters on the airship, the closest he will ever come to his dream now, become prisons of choking stillness when the lights go out. The wind dries the sweat form his body, cooling him. He used to love heat. He would work easily in it, when everyone else had retreated to the comfort of air-conditioning and ice cubes. Then came Rocket 26. It would have taken off. He would have had his dream. But Shera was fixing something. He stopped the Rocket, and she survived. What haunts him is the possibility. She would have been roasted alive, incinerated by the engines. The thought makes him skin burn and his throat close. These days, he can't stand heat. He keeps fans or air-conditioning no wile he works, takes cold showers, and never vacations in Costa del Sol. The death he prevented is the one he remembers.

In the peace of the Life Stream, Zack sobs, trying to muffle his noise before Aerith hears him. He still follows the patterns he taught himself when he was alive, and he sleeps, even though he doesn't need to. A dream has woken him up. A dream he brought on himself, sifting through the memories of the Planet to find out what happened while he was still getting used to being dead. First comes Sephiroth's initial death; the manic light in his eyes, the word 'Mother' on his lips, and Jenova's severed head cradled in his arms. Then the time in the labs, pain and more pain. The escape. The journey across the continent with a near-comatose Cloud, still sick from the experiments himself. And then Zack sees his own death. He feels it again, the impact of the bullets, the searing pain when he registered the hits, the slippery grass and gravel under him, made that way by blood. His blood. He sees Cloud wake. He sees Aerith die. He sees Meteor hurtling at Midgar, feels the Life Stream and the Planet scream in pain and anger. It hurts, He's being torn apart, shredded for use as fuel for the Planet's weapon. Then he wakes, panting and drenched with sweat, though neither should be really possible. Reality descends on him. It all happened. Zack covers his mouth with both hands and cries.

War has left its mark. On the land, on the people. The men it has left behind to feel it fight furiously, employing drink and love and work to numb the pain. They get away on wheel or on foot, trying to escape. But it is always there. The war is within,


End file.
